


Just Right

by Everlind



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't what he thought it would be. Not at all, yet it is still just right exactly the way it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Right

It's not at all how he imagined it to be.

Seriously.

A mere three years ago Shishido'd believed himself to be successful, well-known, rich and an athlete. A champion. Out of them all he was going to be the one to make it, the one who _needed_ to more than anybody else. It was in his blood, it was in his soul, it was in every single pump of blood swelling his heart. Instead the bright, brilliant promise became _this_.

The apartment is.

It's small.

Honestly, that is the first word to come to mind. When he rolls out of bed in the morning to go jogging he has to watch out not to bang his head into the kotatsu, now stripped of the quilted blanket. As soon as he manages not to brutally not brain himself, he'll have to perform a gymnastic maneuver of the complexity he doubts even Gakuto could manage to avoid the sharp corner of the kitchen counter. Six steps, at most, Shishido's bruised left hip bearing testimony to how many times he trips, bangs or collides into the obstacles nonetheless.

The second word to come to mind is shabby.

It is.

Freezing in the winter, a cold to make your bones ache even under the five sweaters and four pairs of socks. Sweltering in these summer, damp and wet and heavy. When the next-door neighbors fuck the headboard banging into the wall makes plaster rain down like chalky snow.  It's unadvisable to turn on two electric appliances at once. Last time he did their was a loud CRACK, a spark and then nothing. For the next three days. Every two weeks he has to scrub the  bathroom walls until his knuckles turn bloody because patches of mildew will bloom all around the sink, creating fuzzy bumps and notches like a type of noxious, exotic moss. 

It's dark and dank and cramped.

New clothes, video games and comic books are the last thing on his mind. Now it's all about whatever bill dropped into the mailbox last and how to pay it. Calculating and re-calculating and sometimes even checking the kitchen cabinets to see if it is possible to last without going grocery shopping that week. If it is a bad month he sometimes calls his aniki, head hanging in defeat and humiliated.

Shishido is thinking about all of this as he stares up at the leak in the kitchen ceiling, having not a single fucking clue as to how to fix it. Out of sheer, stubborn pride he does not want to ask any of his friends even as he furiously believes he's not got a single damn thing to be embarrassed about. He's doing the best he can. 

It takes the better part of the afternoon to find a solution, leaving him frustrated and drained as well as damp when he faceplants onto the bed. His shoulders and back ache from keeping them elevated, his head pounds and Shishido falls asleep like that, one arm and both legs dangling over the edges.

He wakes to the scent of food from his favorite takeaway and lips at the back of his neck. Then down his neck and shoulders and lingering where his spine curves down, warm and sweet and familiar and just right, as right as the large hands cupping around his ribs.

"Hrmp," he says, sleepy and aroused and muscle-sore.

"Hi," Choutarou says. "You're all damp."

"Hn," Shishido answers, shivering as long fingers skitter up under his shirt until it's bunched around his shoulders.

"Ryou," Choutarou breathes against the base of his spine. 

"Hm?"

"I want."

"Yeah?"

"You know."

Shishido laughs into the threadbare sheets and braces himself onto his elbows until his shoulder blades wing up and out the way he knows drives Choutarou crazy. "What about dinner," he says.

" _Please_." 

"Want to fuck me?" 

Choutarou buries his face into the crook of Shishido's neck, hiding. Just knowing he's being all shy and blushing about it makes Shishido grin to himself; his big, tall Choutarou, dwarfing him by a head and still going red in the face because 'oh no, Shishido-san, don't say it like that'. Lame.

His exhales are loud and stuttered as Choutarou works him open, always so gentle. Slow and gentle and careful, like Shishido is precious, something to be cherished every single time over again. It's always like that, with the blushing and the caring hands. Gasping air against the back of his head as he sinks in, so slow, too slow. Up until Shishido rolls his hips back into him and he breaks.

The bed is as shitty as the apartment and creaks with every shift, but Choutarou is slowly losing himself, teeth pressing hard into his right shoulder, catching the edge of an older bruise just right. They move and sigh and breathe and everything is just right, from the way he knows Choutarou is smudging paint into his hair as his digs his fingers into it, staining the hip he's holding steady, the sharp sensation as drags his teeth along his throat and the sloppy kisses at the edge of his jaw.

It's just right, even the sheets having to be washed again after and a suspicious, constant _plink plink plink_ he suspects is the leak again. The food is probably cold and the apartment is way too damn hot, but Choutarous is replete against him, panting, after.

He's got his limbs tangled all around Shishido, smothering his flushed face against his chest. Shishido traces one of the old bruises he left on Choutarou's neck, an imperfect oval fading to that weird yellow-green before it heals.

"What's that noise?" Choutarou mumbles into his skin.

"A leak."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Shishido pets the expanse of unblemished, pale skin under his palms and hates that he can't do better. Give Choutarou what he deserves. That's it leaks and take-away and creaking beds.

"Ryou."

"Yeah?"

"Let's go play tennis."

There's the leak and the cold dinner and Choutarou always has dozens of assignments and reports and projects he needs to work on in the evening and it's hot and it's late.

"Now?"

"Now."

Choutarou can't see it, because he's still playing hide-and-seek in Shishido's armpit, but Shishido smiles.

 

There's so many things he wishes he could change, that bother him and that simply suck big time. 

But he wouldn't trade this for anything in the world.

Ever.


End file.
